Fear over farm links to pharma

Attracta Mooney. The Financial Times, 8 May 2017.

Last August, a woman in her seventies was admitted to a Nevada hospital with a bacterial infection. She had just returned from an extended trip to India, where she had been hospitalised for a broken leg, and her doctors’ first instinct was to do what medics have done for decades: prescribe a course of antibiotics.

But, by early September, the patient, whose name was not revealed, had died. The bacteria causing her infection — a so-called superbug — had proven resistant to all 26 antibiotics available to treat it, including recently developed super-strength drugs.

Antibiotics have been the first port of call for treating infections since penicillin was first identified by Alexander Fleming in the late 1920s. The discovery revolutionised medicine, enabling doctors to treat many common diseases, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, that were once killers.

Yet, the example of the Nevada patient has highlighted how these vital medicines are coming under strain. Her case, while extreme, is not exceptional.

A 2016 study on drug-resistant infections — or antimicrobial resistance — led by Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs banker and UK government minister, estimated that, globally, 700,000 people already die each year from infections that have become resistant to drugs. Left unchecked, the problem is expected to get worse. A 2014 report by Public Health England estimated that by 2050 the global cost of antimicrobial resistance will be as much as $100tn and will account for 10 million deaths a year — more people than currently die from cancer.

A small but growing number of investors are now concerned that the rise of antimicrobial resistance could have a big financial impact on portfolios, hitting pharmaceutical companies, restaurants and food producers in particular.